nu engineer 2009
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With the launch of the ALERT Center, and two new awards of the VOTERS Center and the NEHCEP Center, the College now leads five competitively awarded national research centers. The College continued to expand its faculty; over two years, the number of faculty members increased from 92 to 105 through the recruitment and hiring of outstanding teacher scholars. Plans are to continue to expand, providing great career opportunities for ambitious scholars at all academic ranks. The College also grew in both the quality and size of its student body and developed three new degree programs that will launch this September...TRANSCRIPT
5th4th &engineering captures
Partnership for VA Healthcare engineering center p6
N o r t h e a s t e r n
PECASE
Honor for Purnima Ratilal P7
Bioengineering PhD p8
new MSin energy
systems p9
NSF ADVANCE Grant p9
new center grant
D e v e l o p s M o b i l e
S e n s o r N e t w o r k s
f o r a m e r i c a n
h i g h w a y s p2
n a t i o n a l research c e n t e r s
p1
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to present the 2009 issue of Northeastern University’s NU Engineer,
which provides a glimpse of the College and its accomplishments. The 2008–2009
academic year was stellar on several fronts. With the launch of the ALERT Center, and
two new awards of the VOTERS Center and the NEHCEP Center, the College now
leads five competitively awarded national research centers.
The College continued to expand its faculty; over two years, the number of faculty members
increased from 92 to 105 through the recruitment and hiring of outstanding teacher-
scholars. Plans are to continue to expand, providing great career opportunities for ambitious
scholars at all academic ranks. The College also grew in both the quality and size of its
student body and developed three new degree programs that will launch this September.
The College’s five national centers are funded by diverse federal agencies: the National
Science Foundation (two), the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute
of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In this issue, our
lead article covers the NIST center charged with developing Versatile Onboard Traffic
Embedded Roaming Sensors, which when realized will provide real-time state awareness
of bridge and road infrastructure. A second article introduces the New England Healthcare
Engineering Partnership, one of four Veterans Engineering Research Centers established
across the nation that will bring systems and industrial engineering concepts, technologies,
and solutions to Veterans Affairs hospitals.
In September 2009, two auspicious events will occur. The College will welcome its largest
(in a long time) and academically strongest (ever) freshman class. The number of incom-
ing freshmen represents an almost 25 percent increase from 2008. The College will also
begin celebrating its Centennial Year. In 1909, an enterprising and innovative young dean,
Hercules Geramanos, used the newly developed concept of cooperative education to
launch a full-time engineering college. We believe the current articulation of that concept
represents the best model of engineering education for the 21st century; our Centennial
provides the opportunity to reintroduce this concept to the world.
Recognizing the large and central importance of bio- and biomedical engineering in the
research programs of the College, we are launching MS and PhD programs in bioengi-
neering with seven distinct tracks; we introduce the programs here and provide glimpses
of four exciting and diverse bio-related research programs of our faculty. We are also
launching the first professional MS in Energy Systems, which combines education in
engineering, technology, finance, and policy aspects of energy for professionals who wish
to move into leadership in the corporate and government sectors. Throughout this issue,
you will find a celebration of our faculty: our PECASE recipient, Purnima Ratilal; our
latest CAREER awardee, Luca Caracoglia; new members of our faculty; faculty members
who received tenure and/or promotion; and a listing of awarded honors.
You will find these articles and much more in this issue. I hope you enjoy it.
Please get back to me with any comments at [email protected].
With kind regards,
David E. Luzzi
Dean, College of Engineering
from the dean
NIST Grant Supports National Research CenterMobile sensor networks offer help for ailing infrastructure
New VA Engineering CenterNortheastern leads multiuniversity partnership
PECASE Honor Goes to Purnima RatilalRecognition of exceptional leadership potential
Bioengineering DoctorateWhere biology and engineering meet
New Master of Science in Energy SystemsInterdisciplinary professional program for tomorrow’s leaders
Bioengineering Research HighlightsRobotics for rehabilitation, monitoring cardiovascular health,
brain communication, imaging disease
plusNSF ADVANCE grant
Winslow Sargeant E’86 Nominated by President Obama
Update on Gordon Engineering Leadership Program
Faculty Promotions, Arrivals, and Honors
Students Provide Award-Winning Service
Alumni Celebrate Centennial Year
College of Engineering
David E. Luzzi, DeanDavid Navick, Associate Dean,Enrollment and Information Services Richard J. Scranton, Associate Dean,Undergraduate Programs Yaman Yener, Associate Dean,Research and Graduate Studies Deborah A. Northall, Director,Administration and Finance
Questions and Comments
David E. Luzzi, Dean · [email protected] of Engineering 230 Snell Engineering Center Northeastern University 360 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 617.373.2152
Photography Credits
Craig Bailey Adam Cooper, RBP and LIJHS Jörg Meyer Raji Punjabi (Civ’10) White House Press Office
Editorial
Marjorie Gove Lisa Lehane Christina McNeil Susan Pasternack Design: Fyfe Design
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Five National Research CentersGordon Center – www.censsis.neu.edu
CHN Center – www.nano.neu.edu
ALERT – www.northeastern.edu/alert
Versatile Onboard Traffic Embedded Roaming Sensors (VOTERS) – Page 2
New England Healthcare Engineering Partnership (NEHCEP) – Page 6
The End of the Road for Unsafe and Congested Highways
Deteriorating infrastructure is a roadblock for the
U.S. economy. Northeastern’s expertise in advanced
sensing technology may hold a solution.
One of the first projects
selected for NIST’s new
TIP grants, Northeastern’s
novel sensing system
wins the largest award.
The End of the Road for Unsafe and Congested Highways
Anyone who’s inched along on a congested road may not be surprised to learn that
American drivers spend 4.2 billion hours each year sitting in backed-up traffic, often caused
by road crews, at an estimated cost of $78.2 billion in lost time and wasted fuel. And as anyone
who’s cracked an axle in a pothole can attest, poor road conditions can damage vehicles, resulting
in about $67 billion in annual car repair and operating costs. Road disrepair also contributes
to the more than 2.5 million deaths and injuries each year from vehicle crashes, which, in
addition to the human cost, rack up $230 billion in lost productivity; travel delays; and
medical, insurance, and legal expenses.
Our roads and bridges are crumbling away beneath our tires. Yet, as conditions decline,
demand and economic dependence grow. Highway and road systems are increasingly vital
to our economy. Ironically, our intensifying dependence on and use of the infrastructure are
hastening its demise. Sending work crews to assess, maintain, and repair the infrastructure
only adds to the congestion, and is spotty at best. Stuck in traffic, the driving public wastes
time and money, road crews labor under dangerous conditions, and no one is happy about it.
As Ming L. Wang, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern and an expert
on the use of sensor technology for infrastructures, succinctly remarks, “Roads need to work.”
The grades for U.S. roads and bridges are in, and they
aren’t good. In its 2009 “Report Card for America’s
Infrastructure,” the American Society of Civil Engineers
gave bridges a C. Roads received a disgraceful D-,
a steady drop from an unimpressive D four years ago.
One of the first projects
selected for NIST’s new
TIP grants, Northeastern’s
novel sensing system
wins the largest award.
“We see a new industry, new jobs being created as a result of VOTERS.
This innovative technology wil l address a major societal need and
save bi l l ions of dollars in annual inspection costs. It wil l serve as a
platform for future network-based sensing systems for maintenance,
planning, and the security of our civi l infrastructure.” — professor ming l. wang
A new approach to an old problem
To that end, Wang and Sara J. Wadia-
Fascetti, associate professor in Northeastern’s
Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, are leading the effort as
coprincipal investigators of the Versatile
Onboard Traffic Embedded Roaming Sensors
(VOTERS) project, which will develop afford-
able, cost-effective, nondisruptive methods
of detecting surface and subsurface defects
in roads and bridges.
Backed by a five-year, $9 million grant from
the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) Technology Innovation
Program (TIP), the VOTERS team includes
more than 30 faculty, research scientists,
and graduate students from the fields of
electrical, computer, and civil engineering.
Joining Northeastern University, the lead
research institution, as project partners are
the University of Vermont, the University of
Massachusetts Lowell, Analogic Corporation,
Infrasense, Inc., and the Massachusetts
Highway Department.
VOTERS will accomplish its mission without
interrupting the flow of traffic, by essentially
using traffic itself to monitor and assess
conditions. The project team is developing a
set of sensors that will attach to the under-
sides of vehicles driven at normal speeds and
over usual routes. The sensors will relay col-
lected data about infrastructure conditions to
a central computer system, which will process
the information and identify problem areas.
“VOTERS will change the way infrastructure
is inspected and maintained,” said Wadia-
Fascetti. “It will transform the entire
infrastructure assessment and maintenance
industry.” Currently, a city or state hires a
contractor to survey and assess its roadways
and bridges, requiring work sites that block
traffic, add to congestion, and create potentially
unsafe conditions for both drivers and
inspection personnel. In addition, even if
inspections are made regularly, conditions
change frequently, and it would be more ac-
curate to monitor infrastructure continuously.
Innovative technology, real-time data The general concept of using sensors on mov-
ing vehicles has been around for a while, but
the technology didn’t exist. However, now, with
proposed new research and advances, “the
technologies are coming together,” said Jeffrey
Doughty, project manager for VOTERS.
The project addresses the challenges of
developing high-risk, high-payoff sensing
and computing technologies as well as light-
weight, relatively inexpensive hardware that
won’t interfere with the host vehicle or the
flow of traffic. The intention is for the system
to be autonomous, with no additional effort
required of the driver and minimal human
involvement in reading the collected data.
The VOTERS team is working on three sen-
sors that will require new developments in
existing radar technologies and a completely
novel acoustic method.
Surface Looking Millimeter-Wave Radar
(SLiMR) will make inspections near the sur-
face of reinforced concrete pavement, using
commercial off-the-shelf COTS 77 GHz
radar. Similar sensors are in current use
in upscale automobiles as parking guides
and collision-avoidance systems. “We will
essentially take that and point it downward,”
Wadia-Fascetti explained.
In addition to SLiMR, Gigahertz Electro-
magnetic Array Roaming Sensors (GEARS)
will use an advance in air-coupled ground-
penetrating radar (GPR) yet to be developed to
detect such subsurface defects as delamina-
tions, trapped moisture, and rebar corrosion.
Although GPR is already used for inspec-
tions, current equipment is large and bulky
and needs to be towed behind a vehicle or
pushed by hand. VOTERS intends to develop
a much smaller, lightweight component that
can be mounted beneath a vehicle and oper-
ate accurately at normal travel speeds.
“We’re leveraging the wealth of experience
developed from Gordon-CenSSIS,” said
Carey M. Rappaport, professor of electrical
and computer engineering, associate director
of Northeastern’s National Science Foundation–
supported Bernard M. Gordon Center for
Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems
(Gordon-CenSSIS), and head of the VOTERS
radar efforts. “We are applying advanced
methods of noninvasive underground
detection and interpretation to this very
practical, very important problem.”
The third sensor, a Tire Excited Acoustic
Sensor (TEASe), will be not only new hard-
ware, but also new technology. TEASe will be
a wave-based sensor that will analyze the tire
noise generated in normal driving to acousti-
4 NU Engineer
“We see a new industry, new jobs being created as a result of VOTERS.
This innovative technology wil l address a major societal need and
save bi l l ions of dollars in annual inspection costs. It wil l serve as a
platform for future network-based sensing systems for maintenance,
planning, and the security of our civi l infrastructure.” — professor ming l. wang
NU Engineer 5
cally identify defects in asphalt overlay and
concrete roadbeds. “This enables all vehicles
to become road-quality sensors; therefore,
road defects can be detected without stop-
ping traffic,” said Wang.
Using a Global Positioning System coupled
with video to be developed under the leader-
ship of Octavia Camps, professor of electrical
and computer engineering at Northeastern,
VOTERS will be able to pinpoint the location
of a needed repair, not just what road but what
lane, and where in the lane. The VOTERS
team hopes to design technology that is as ac-
curate as one centimeter in locating a defect.
Signal processing strategies
The team envisions the user agencies deploy-
ing VOTERS on hundreds of vehicles driven
in their regular daily use, over their normal
routes, and at their normal speeds. The
research will determine what the best type of
vehicle is—bus, van, truck, or automobile—
both for the sensors and for the widest range
of surface coverage. Buses, for example, may
prove to work well with the technology but
only provide data from the right lane.
Using many vehicles passing over the
same areas would allow the system to
collect multiple data on the same features.
The discovery of an anomaly by one vehicle
would be corroborated, or not, by others.
Such redundancy would verify the data
and prevent a repair crew being sent out
unnecessarily by a faulty reading.
VOTERS will require new signal-processing
methods. Deploying hundreds of sensing
“For example,” Wang said, “our sensors
will monitor location and speed of the host
vehicles, so there is the potential for real-time
traffic monitoring that could be transmitted
to interactive road-condition signs.”
While the team anticipates that the initial
purchasers of the first commercially available
VOTERS systems will be government
agencies, other entities such as airports could
use it to monitor their asphalt and concrete
structures. The team plans to produce a
viable prototype within five years. The tech-
nology will transition from research project
to commercial use and will be available to
corporations to build and sell.
“The 21st century will witness the installation
and use of engineering systems that provide
detailed ‘state awareness’ of complex systems
that realize major improvements in efficiencies
and reliabilities,” remarked David E. Luzzi,
dean of the College of Engineering.
“Professor Wang and our VOTERS team
bring Northeastern’s interdisciplinary, multi-
institutional, translational research approach
to the complex challenge of infrastructure
management. I expect great benefits for
society from the efforts of our outstanding
faculty and students.”
“We see a new industry, new jobs being
created as a result of VOTERS,” said Wang.
“This innovative technology will address a
major societal need and save billions of dol-
lars in annual inspection costs. It will serve
as a platform for future network-based sens-
ing systems for maintenance, planning, and
the security of our civil infrastructure.”
units will generate an overwhelming amount
of information that requires the development
of onboard data-reducing algorithms based
on individual and fused data sets. Important
data will be transferred via the cellular phone
network to a back-end geospatial database
that will buffer and store it. Road status
compiled from the deployed sensors will be
shown on a central electronic Management
and Prognosis (MAP) system.
Some onboard processing will also be
necessary to manage the sheer volume of
data. To meet this need, the VOTERS team
will develop the Broad Overseer Sensing
System (BOSS), computer software designed
to process and register data on board as well as
control each sensing component.
Doughty points out that current radar
evaluation is done by humans, who perform
the post-process tasks. “Our goal is to have
the VOTERS system run itself, making many
judgments without humans. Of course,
people will be involved in the final analysis.”
Upping the intelligent highway’s IQ
VOTERS, as Wang explains, is a good
conceptual fit with the federal Intelligent
Transportation Systems (ITS) program
established in 1991 under the Intermodal
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. The
goal of ITS is to use advanced technology
on vehicles and in infrastructure to solve
the problems of traffic congestion and safety
and, by doing so, improve U.S. productivity.
VOTERS components can be used as planned,
as well as for alternate uses related to ITS.
6 NU Engineer
processes will be especially important as new
needs develop and as the healthcare needs of
veterans change over time.
“Our vision is to do for healthcare what the
Toyota Production System, Six Sigma Quality,
and industrial engineering methods did for
the automobile, electronics, and other
industries,” said Benneyan. “By leveraging
the broad expertise of VA, academic partners,
and healthcare improvement experts, over
time we will embed engineering improvement
methods, principles, and capabilities into
the fabric of the VA healthcare system. The
center’s projects and educational programs
will cross-educate future engineers and
healthcare professionals so that they can work
effectively together to improve healthcare.”
Added Dr. Michael Mayo-Smith, network
director of the VA New England Healthcare
System, “Through these inte-
grated efforts, we expect
nothing less than to build
a pervasive culture of im-
provement that will engage
all of our staff, from top to
bottom, in this fundamen-
tally important work.”
Located within the Boston VA Healthcare
System, NEHCEP will serve the entire New
England network of 8 medical centers and
37 community-based outpatient clinics, which
together provide care to some 1.2 million
veterans. VA already has one of the best
healthcare systems in the U.S., and the
vision of the four new centers is to help lead
the U.S. in improving healthcare processes,
increasing access, and reducing costs.
In addition to conventional industrial
engineering methods, NEHCEP will use
advanced mathematical and computer
modeling methods to analyze, improve,
and optimize processes. In other industries,
new healthcare systems engineering
center has been established partnering
Northeastern University’s healthcare
industrial engineering program with New
England Veterans Affairs (VA), the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology, Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, and several VA centers
of excellence. The partnership will develop
and implement innovative industrial
engineering solutions to dramatically
improve process quality, access, safety,
efficiency, and performance throughout the
VA healthcare system, as well as New England
and U.S. healthcare processes more broadly.
Supported initially by $3.4 million annually
from the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs in grants and matching funding,
the New England Healthcare Engineering
Partnership (NEHCEP) is one of four new
national Veterans Engineering Research
Centers created in July 2009 that together
represent the single largest investment in
healthcare process improvement in the U.S.
“There is an urgent need to improve patient
safety and healthcare delivery across the U.S.
and worldwide, and this unique healthcare-
engineering partnership is designed to
provide an approach that will signifi-
cantly improve healthcare systems through
engineering-based solutions,” said Professor
James Benneyan, NEHCEP executive direc-
tor and professor of industrial and mechani-
cal engineering at Northeastern.
NEHCEP’s mission and strategy are (1) to
develop and apply systems engineering
methods similar to those used successfully
in other industries to create highly efficient,
safe, effective, and reliable processes; (2) to
solve immediate urgent system issues as
they arise; and (3) to build long-term systems
engineering improvement capabilities both
internally at VA and through a network of
external partners. Developing this ability to
continually improve clinical and operational
Improving Healthcare for VeteransNortheastern Leads Multiuniversity Partnership with Veterans Affairs
these methods are
employed to en-
hance product flow,
increase efficiency,
improve quality, and
reduce costs; they
can be used to tackle
similar issues in
healthcare, such as access, waits and delays,
safety, optimal care, efficiency, equity, and
effectiveness, the top healthcare priorities
recently identified by the Institute of Medicine
and the National Academy of Engineering.
“As the largest healthcare system in the U.S.
and one with deep leadership commitment,
VA is an ideal environment for developing,
demonstrating, and disseminating healthcare
engineering solutions nationwide,” added
Benneyan. Known for more than 20 years
of work in healthcare systems engineering,
Benneyan is a fellow at the Institute of
Healthcare Improvement, the founder
of Northeastern’s Quality and Productivity
Healthcare Research Lab, a former senior
systems engineer at Harvard Community
Health Plan, vice president of the Institute
of Industrial Engineers, and past president
of the Society for Health Systems.
Several new academic programs will be
created to develop a future workforce skilled
in both engineering improvement methods
and healthcare systems. For Northeastern
students, this will include the creation of new
co-op positions and undergraduate senior
projects with VA and other Boston-area
hospital partners; undergraduate and graduate
courses; a healthcare industrial engineering
minor; graduate applied research projects;
and eventually a professional master’s degree
program. To accomplish this vision, the center
also will focus on leveraging its resources
and other partnerships to develop additional
funding for methods research, professional
development, and educational programs.
Professor James Benneyan
NU Engineer 7
ollege of Engineering faculty member Purnima Ratilal is the
recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and
Engineers (PECASE), considered the highest honor bestowed by
the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers begin-
ning their independent careers. The award is intended to recognize
those who “show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontier of
scientific knowledge during the 21st century.”
An assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, Ratilal
was selected by the U.S. Department of Defense for this award. She will
receive $200,000 per year for five years in support of her research.
Ratilal was 1 of 67 scholars chosen by nine federal departments and
agencies. She and other recipients were honored at a December 19,
2008, White House ceremony led by John H. Marburger III, then sci-
ence advisor to the president and director of the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“To receive the award is a dream come true,” Ratilal said. “It is a very
prestigious award for young faculty, and when I heard about it, I was
overjoyed beyond words.”
Ratilal’s research focuses on exploring acous-
tic, seismic, and ultrasound remote sensing in
the ocean for military, ecology, and commer-
cial applications. Current projects include a remote acoustic
sensing system for rapidly imaging and localizing schools of fish and
other biology over areas spanning thousands of square kilometers in
near real time, and an “extinction theorem” used to design an acoustic
“burglar alarm” or “trip-wire”
system for detecting sub-
merged objects. Such projects
are useful to both regulatory
agencies and fishermen, as
well as to the Office of Naval
Research, whose officers
have difficulty differentiating
various underwater objects.
“Fish are the main cause of false alarms or clutter for the Navy,” Ratilal
said, noting that the military branch is interested in developing signal
processing and tactical approaches for classifying objects in the ocean.
One way to accomplish this is to use acoustic color, which
discerns targets with an acoustic sensing system based on their
scattering response as a function of frequency.
Ratilal’s mentor, electrical and computer engineering professor Carey
Rappaport, noted that the PECASE award distinguishes her as one of
the world’s experts on using and processing sonar data in the ocean.
”Whenever the president of the United States hands out an award,”
he said, “it puts the recipient in the upper echelon of achievement.
For a Northeastern faculty member to be represented among the
winners is pretty fantastic.”
Funding from the Department of Defense will go toward hiring
undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral associates,
as well as for conducting research analysis and experiments,
Ratilal said.
PECASE Recognizes Exceptional PotentialCOE Faculty Member Purnima Ratilal Receives Prestigious Award
Winslow Sargeant, E86 Our Man in Washington
inslow Sargeant, a 1986 graduate in electrical engineering
from the Northeastern University College of Engineering
and 2003 recipient of the Northeastern University Outstand-
ing Engineering Alumnus Award, has been nominated
by President Obama as the chief counsel for
advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration.
If confirmed, Sargeant will assume the new
government post following an accomplished
career in both government and the private
sector. He has been a managing director in the
technology practice at Venture Investors since
2006. From 2001 to 2005, he was the program
manager for the Small Business Innovations
Research (SBIR) Program in Electronics, a new
office in the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Directorate.
Previously, he cofounded Aanetcom, a start-up semiconductor chip
company, following senior engineering positions at Lucent, AT&T
Bell Labs, and IBM.
Sargeant currently serves on several boards, including those of Silatronix
and Pattern Insight and for a number of nonprofit and education
organizations. He is a member of the advisory board of the National
Science Foundation’s Industrial Innovation and Partnership Division.
He earned an MS from Iowa State University and a PhD from the
University of Wisconsin, both in electrical engineering. He was a
member of the 11th class of Kauffman Fellows, a program that identifies,
develops, and networks the next generation of global leaders in the
venture capital industry. Sargeant currently serves on the Northeastern
University Board of Governance as a member of the Corporation. Winslow Sargeant
Professor Purnima Ratilal at the White House
Gordon Fellow Matt Dickman and surgeons at North Shore Long Island Jewish Medical Center view intraoperative CT images from the CereTom®
8 NU Engineer
Bioengineering DoctorateWhere Biology and Engineering Meet
he interface of biology and engineering
offers one of the most dynamic and
important areas for interdisciplinary
research. To take advantage of and expand
upon the interdisciplinary and translational
research in biology, engineering, and related
disciplines conducted at Northeastern University,
the College of Engineering (COE) offers a new
PhD degree program in bioengineering begin-
ning fall 2009. Some 91 faculty from COE, Arts
and Sciences, and Bouvé College of Health
Sciences will be affiliated with the program.
Tracks or areas of concentration will be available
in bioimaging and signal processing; bio-
mechanics and mechanobiology; bioMEMs/
BioNano; biochemical/bioenvironmental
engineering; motor control; and
biocomputing. An unrestricted but guided
track will also be available. This system
provides flexibility, as tracks may be added
or removed depending on evolving strengths
in the College of Engineering and across
the University.
The students who pursue this degree will
possess varying engineering backgrounds.
They will acquire sufficient breadth of
knowledge and fluency to interact with
clinicians and life-science researchers, as
well as enough depth of knowledge to per-
form quantitative bioengineering research
as independent investigators in the most
original and innovative areas of inquiry.
According to Jeff Ruberti, associate professor
of mechanical and industrial engineering
and program director, “In designing
the program, we examined
the strengths of Northeastern, determined what a ‘bioengineer’ should be,
and added significant value to the scaffold-
ing that was already in place. We have no
doubt that students who graduate from the
program will be well prepared to compete for
the top academic appointments and industry
positions available.”
Gordon Engineering Leadership ProgramPioneering Graduates Reach Important Milestones
he Gordon Engineering Leadership
Program was established in 2007
through a major gift from the Gordon
Foundation, established by Bernard and
Sophia Gordon, to address the increasing
need for young engineers who are prepared
early in their careers to contribute to the
development of products and technology.
The program is housed in the Gordon Center
for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging
Systems, directed by Michael Silevitch,
Robert D. Black Professor of Engineering.
The intensive one-year program culminates
in a Graduate Certificate in Engineering
Leadership (GCEL) and can lead to a Master
of Science in Electrical and Computer
Engineering Leadership (MSECEL) or another
engineering discipline. The Gordon Fellows
are typically sponsored by their employers.
Coursework in engineering leadership and
scientific foundations of engineering is
complemented by a “challenge project,”
a market-worthy and technologically
feasible effort of strategic importance to
the student’s sponsoring organization.
Today, Matt Dickman (GCEL and MSECEL,
2008) leads NeuroLogica Corporation’s
CereTom® product effort. His project
involved the development of revolutionary
cranial fixation devices that eliminate metal
artifacts for accurate real-time portable
computer tomography (CT) imaging in
situations where it was previously unavailable,
such as the operating room. This technology
provides neurosurgeons with greater con-
fidence that procedures will be successful
before patients leave the operating table. Dick-
man now manages a team of three and travels
globally to market and refine the CereTom®
scanner. Michael King (GCEL, 2008) is an
electrical design engineer at Raytheon
Integrated Defense Systems. His project eval-
uated the effectiveness of using a set of highly
distributed mobile sensors to deter radio-
logical threats and contributed to Raytheon’s
receiving a substantial funding award from
the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office for
exploratory research. Karina Snow (GCEL,
2009) is a development engineer at GE Health-
care who is pursuing a master’s in mechanical
engineering. She leads a breast biopsy guid-
ance program in collaboration with research-
ers at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Among the fall 2009 Gordon Fellows is John
Banzhaf, whose work is related to ALERT, a
Department of Homeland Security–funded
Center of Excellence at Northeastern.
Banzhaf is sponsored by Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory’s (PNNL) National Security
Directorate through the National Security
Internship Program. He will take a leading
role in a collaborative effort between PNNL
and Northeastern that focuses on identifying
viable detection techniques related to vehicle-
borne improvised explosive devices.
NU Engineer 9
New Master of Science in Energy SystemsBlends Engineering Skills with Knowledge of Financial Planning
o meet the growing demand for leaders with expertise in both
energy technology and economics, the College of Engineering is
offering a new Master of Science in Energy Systems (MSES). The
MSES integrates technology aspects of energy systems development
with training in economic and financial planning. The high-
level, interdisciplinary program is intended
for the engineer or technical professional
interested in moving into leadership roles.
The goals of the program are to educate students in current and
future energy systems technologies and to provide a background for
integrating a broad spectrum of energy-related technologies along
with the necessary economic and financial background to successfully
implement the technologies. The program will also seek to develop
leadership and decision-making skills for the application of energy
systems in either the private or public sector of the global market.
The MSES curriculum is based in energy technology and includes
significant interface with business and financial decision processes.
The curriculum offers students flexibility in their course of study,
with a set of six core courses in engineering knowledge and finance,
plus four electives that can be taken from any department within the
College of Engineering. Students will have access to both business
educators and practicing professionals, and the opportunity to
participate in a six-month co-op experience at an industry partner.
“The development of energy solutions within companies and for society
involves knowing energy technologies and working within the business
environment and financial constraints to implement them,” said Gregory
Kowalski, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering
and director of the MSES program. “This program provides students
with a foundation in alternative energy and leading-edge combustion
technologies, integrating them with trigeneration and conservation
practices that include the related economic and political aspects.”
reaking down institutional barriers; advancing women in aca-
demic fields; increasing the representation and advancement
of women in academic science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) careers; and “contributing to the development of
a more diverse science and engineering workforce” are the goals to be
pursued with the $3.7 million Northeastern University received from
a National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE grant announced in
April 2009. Through NSF’s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation
Award for Advancing Women in Interdisciplinary and International
Networks, Northeastern is launching a five-year program to increase
recruitment and other opportunities for women on campus.
Northeastern, one of nine new sites awarded the institutional trans-
formation grants in 2008, resolves to be innovative in its approach, to
avoid replicating similar efforts, and to be a university that other insti-
tutions of higher learning can emulate. “We want to go beyond what
others have done,” President Joseph E. Aoun said.
The ADVANCE award makes possible improved recruitment for
applicant-pool diversity, interdisciplinary networking for prospective
faculty, and funding opportunities for departments and programs to
strengthen networks for collaboration. The award will also serve as a
catalyst for prioritizing gender balance and diversity within the
University’s Academic Plan.
Directing the ADVANCE
program at Northeastern is
Sara Wadia-Fascetti, associate
professor of civil and envi-
ronmental engineering and
special assistant to the provost for faculty development. Wadia-
Fascetti works with a team of faculty colleagues who have administrative
experience and represent an interdisciplinary mix of research areas.
“Through strong commitment from the provost and participating deans,
the ADVANCE team is collectively responsible
for engaging the entire university in efforts
that will increase and retain faculty women in
engineering and science fields,” said Wadia-Fascetti.
The ADVANCE award will support the University’s goal of increasing
the representation and progress of women in academic science and
engineering careers by promoting positive changes that will advance
all members of the faculty in research environments that are increas-
ingly interdisciplinary and global. “This grant is an important part of
Northeastern University’s transformation into an institution that more
strongly encourages growth and success for women in academia,”
said Provost Stephen W. Director.
ADVANCEs for Women in Science and Engineering
NSF Transformation Grant Supports Five-Year Program
ADVANCE professional development workshop
AKROD is meant to train patients in correct
knee hyperextension during stance and
reduced knee flexion during swing.
The projects include activities for undergrad-
uates to conduct research in robotics, indus-
try internships, projects to attract high school
students to the field, and seminars and
websites on robotic rehabilitation devices.
The AKROD project also includes a collabo-
ration between Northeastern and WGI, Inc.,
a supplier of precision parts and assemblies for
aerospace, industrial, and medical applications.
The University and the company signed an R&D
licensing agreement for Electro-Rheological
Fluid (ERF, otherwise known as “smart
fluid”) technology, a foundation for a series
of devices invented by Mavroidis and his team.
Mobility Assistance through Robotics
reakthrough robotics technology from
Northeastern has again received funding
from the National Science Foundation.
Two inventions by Constantinos Mavroidis
and his team will receive support of more
than $1 million over the next three years.
In partnership with Harvard Medical School
(HMS)–affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation
Hospital’s Motion Analysis Laboratory,
Northeastern’s Biomedical Mechatronics
Laboratory will develop the Robotic Gait
Rehabilitation (RGR) Trainer and the
Active Knee Rehabilitation Orthotic Device
(AKROD) for rehabilitation of the pelvis and
the knee, respectively. The devices could
benefit patients with neurological ailments,
including stroke survivors and those recover-
ing from wounds and accidents.
While the RGR Trainer will provide a study of
patient-robot interaction via haptic and visual
feedback provided through the pelvis, AKROD
will build upon the technology of a knee reha-
10 NU Engineer
Robotic gait rehabilitation trainer using
force feedback at the pelvis
team of researchers led by Shashi
Murthy, assistant professor of chemical
engineering, has developed a device
that can monitor cardiovascular health by
using just 200 microliters of blood. Smaller
than a slim cell phone, the device
makes use of antibodies that
naturally bind to endothelial
progenitor cells present in
a blood sample. The number of
these cells in an individual’s blood is a direct
measure of cardiovascular health. Endothelial
progenitor cells have the ability to repair
damaged vessels. Studies have shown that
their numbers are decreased by typical cardio-
vascular risk factors, such as high cholesterol.
Murthy, the project’s lead researcher, recently
published a paper on his novel method of
Monitoring Heart Disease with a Single Drop of Blood
bilitation device with resistive force developed by
Mavroidis and his team; they will develop and
test a device with an active component for gait
rehabilitation for people with knee problems.
“Robotics and mechatronics
offer the promise of sensitive,
objective measurements and
mobility assistance by using
wearable, portable, computer-
controlled active devices,”
said Mavroidis, professor of mechanical and
industrial engineering. The RGR Training
device will generate force fields applied at the
pelvic area to facilitate treadmill gait retraining
in patients with abnormal gait patterns.
Data from both normal volunteers and
hemiplegic stroke survivors will help to cre-
ate training programs for knee orthosis to
assist patients in reestablishing a natural gait
pattern. With resistive (variable damper)
and active (torque actuator) components,
disease detection in the Federation of American
Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.
The coauthors of this study are Brian Plouffe,
a chemical engineering doctoral student at
Northeastern; Tatiana Kniazeva, a chemical
engineering undergraduate at Northeastern;
and Virna Sales, a Harvard Medical School
instructor and a cardiovascular surgeon at
Children’s Hospital Boston.
It will take at least two years, Murthy said,
before the diagnostic tool is available for
clinical use. Over the next several months,
he and his team will begin to test the
reliability of the device by studying blood
samples from patients known to be at risk
or known not to be at risk for heart disease.
Murthy is also working to obtain funding
from government and private sources for
this extensive clinical study.
Eventually, Murthy hopes to move beyond
using the device solely as a diagnostic
application. Endothelial progenitor cells
have been shown to repair damaged blood
vessels in animals; it may be possible to repair
damaged arteries by isolating these cells from
the circulating blood of a patient, multiplying
them, and injecting them into damaged tissue
in the patient’s body via a surgical procedure.
This technology is part of a broad family of
microfluidic devices being designed by
Murthy’s lab for a wide variety of applica-
tions, from isolating stem cells from adult
tissue samples (such as cardiac, skin, and
intestinal tissue) to diagnosing diseases.
The versatility of these devices, said Murthy,
arises from the extreme simplicity of their
design, which will facilitate their ultimate
use in clinical settings.
Noninvasive Brain Computer Interfaces with Electroencephalography
Seeing Disease with Laser Light
NU Engineer 11
he last decade has brought great improvements in the design of sys-
tems that will enable direct communication between the human brain
and artificial systems. Brain signal acquisition modalities range from
invasive microelectrode and electrocorticography (ECoG) to noninvasive
electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectrum (NIRS) optical
techniques. Brain computer interface (BCI) will revolutionize human/
computer interaction; it offers promise to people with motor, speech,
and communication disabilities to express themselves, and emerges as
a potentially transformative human/computer interaction modality for
various attention- and information-intensive tasks. Researchers in COE
are developing noninvasive BCI technologies under major funding from
DARPA, NIH, NSF, and the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation.
Deniz Erdogmus, assistant professor of electrical and computer engi-
neering, is collaborating with Honeywell Human Centered Systems
Research Laboratory to develop, under DARPA funding, a BCI-based
image-retrieval system from massive image databases. This technology
is aimed at exploiting the acute visual target detection and recognition
capability of the human operator.
Erdogmus is also working with Oregon Health and Science University to
develop a noninvasive smart BCI-based typewriter for people with locked-in
syndrome (LIS), as part of a five-year NIH-funded project. The BCI type-
writer will feature adaptive EEG signal processing and user-specific open-
vocabulary language models to achieve high communication throughput
via fusion of information from the EEG signals and the language model.
Erdogmus, along with Rupal Patel, associate professor in the Speech-
Language Pathology and Audiology Department, recently started a
three-year NSF-funded project to design an icon-based text-generation
system operated via a BCI. The expectation is that in closed-vocabulary
conversational environments, an iconic representation of words and
phrases will lead to a more natural and faster visual stimulus selection
paradigm in the context of BCI-based human/computer interaction.
These projects rely on a BCI technique that exploits the visual P300
response of the brain, which is a strong positive increase in scalp
voltage that occurs after 300ms in response to an interesting or target
stimulus. “The main technical challenge here is the accurate and pre-
cise detection of P300 responses in each single trial from multichannel
EEG measurements in real time,” said Erdogmus. “The successful
solution of this single-trial event-related potential detection problem is
key to the future widespread and practical usability of BCI systems,
and it is one of the main problems our group focuses on.”
ark Niedre, assistant professor of electrical and computer
engineering, along with his collaborators from COE and
Harvard Medical School (HMS), is developing new methods of
disease imaging in live animals with laser light. The research has many
implications for understanding how diseases such as cancer develop
and can be treated with new therapies. The underlying technology
utilizes fluorescent probes that are targeted to specific molecules in the
body that can then be detected with advanced optical-imaging devices.
Niedre, who joined COE in fall 2008 from HMS, has begun working on
the development of an instrument to noninvasively detect very rare
circulating cells in the bloodstream, first in live animals and, eventually,
if all goes well, in humans. In June 2009, Niedre was
awarded a $380,000 New Investigator grant
from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
to develop the concept. The device will use rapid optical
sampling of the blood vessels and search for characteristic signals from
circulating cells. “In principle, we will be able to sample the entire
blood volume in minutes,” said Niedre.
It is anticipated that the instrument will be used to better understand the
processes behind the metastatic spread of cancer, as well as the mecha-
nisms by which hematopoietic stem cells mobilize in the bloodstream.
The research is being conducted in collaboration with Shashi Murthy,
assistant professor of chemical engineering, and HMS researchers.
Niedre’s related research in ultrafast small-animal fluorescence imag-
ing, performed with Professor Vasilis Ntziachristos of the Technical
University of Munich, was published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences and featured in the MIT Technology Review.
“The problem with imaging with laser light in biological tissue is
that it undergoes a tremendous amount of scatter,” said Niedre.
The solution involved the use of high-speed pulsed lasers and ultrafast
detectors to preferentially select light that had traveled along a more
direct path. The researchers were able to use the technique to
accurately image lung cancer in mice. “Practically, it’s very tricky
to do, because these things are happening on a very fast, picosecond
time scale,” added Niedre.
“Right now, we can image one fluorescent target at a time. We would
like to be able to push that so that we could image even more targets
simultaneously in an efficient way,” said Niedre. This would allow
scientists to perform research that is currently very difficult, such as
studying molecular responses to new anti-cancer therapies. “Putting
the information from multiple molecular targets together can help
researchers better optimize current therapies and better understand
which new ones may prove successful,” said Niedre.
12 NU Engineer
Acknowledging Faculty
a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s in Research and Teaching
In recognition of her path-breaking career and cutting-edge
research, the Northeastern University Board of Trustees has
promoted Jacqueline Isaacs to Professor of Mechanical and Industrial
Engineering. An associate director of the Northeastern Center for
High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN), she leads the center’s
research effort on societal implications of nanotechnology.
The recipient of a 1988 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development
(CAREER) award, Isaacs has focused her research on environmental and economic
issues in advanced materials processing. At CHN, she reviews the life-cycle assessment
of processes under development and evaluates various alternatives to find environmen-
tally benign processes or products. This research has evolved into the field known as
“environmentally benign design and manufacturing.”
As a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and now as a fac-
ulty member at Northeastern, she has worked to develop spreadsheet-based modeling
tools to help assess the environmental attributes and economics of various manufactur-
ing and recycling processes, both existing and under development.
Isaacs has organized sessions for national professional society meetings, including
the American Society for Engineering Education, the IEEE International Symposium
on Electronics and the Environment, and the Materials Research Society. In 2000, she
received a Northeastern University Excellence in Teaching Award. She received a PhD
in materials science and engineering from MIT in 1991.
NU Engineer 13
Mehrdad Sasani, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, conducts research
in structural engineering, including progressive collapse of structures, earthquake engineering,
and structural reliability. His work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S.
General Services Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. Sasani’s expertise
in the progressive collapse of structures has been featured on the Discovery Channel, and he has
pioneered a research program on collapse resistance of actual full-scale structures. He organized
the First National Educational Competition on Predicting Progressive Collapse Resistance of
RC Structural Systems at Northeastern and is planning the second competition. Sasani was the
recipient of a 2006 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER)
award. He has been a member of committees of the American Concrete Institute on performance-
based design of concrete structures, seismic repair and rehabilitation, and seismic shear. He is
also a member of the ASCE/SEI task committee on progressive collapse. Sasani received a PhD
in structural engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001.
Milica Stojanovic, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, conducts
research in digital communications, signal processing, detection and estimation theory, and
communication networks. She is interested in communication system design and performance
analysis for time-varying channels, with related applications to mobile wireless environments
in general and underwater acoustic communication channels in particular. She is also a
visiting scientist at MIT and a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
An active member of the IEEE and the Acoustical Society of America, Stojanovic is an associate
editor of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering and the Elsevier Journal of Physical Communication.
She is a member of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Administrative Committee.
Stojanovic received her MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Northeastern University.
Nian-xiang Sun, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was a scientist at
IBM and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies before joining the Northeastern faculty. He won
a first prize IDEMA Foundation Fellowship in 2000, the ONR (Office of Naval Research) Young
Investigator Award in 2007, and a 2008 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career
Development (CAREER) award. His research interests include novel magnetic, ferroelectric,
and magnetoelectric materials and devices; magnetic sensors; material and device properties at
RF/microwave frequencies; energy-harvesting materials and devices; and micro/nanotechnologies
for biomedical magnetic sensing. Sun has published more than 70 technical papers and filed
more than 20 U.S. patents and patent disclosures. His research is supported by the NSF and
ONR, among others. Sun received his PhD from Stanford University in 2002.
Mehdi B. Tahoori, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, focuses
his research on test, reliability, and design automation of digital systems. In particular, his
current research directions are in nanocomputing, dependable computing, and system biology,
specifically analysis of complex molecular pathways in human disorders. He was a 2008 recipient
of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award.
His professional activities include serving as program chair of the IEEE Defect-Based Testing
Workshop; program committee member of the IEEE International Workshop on Design and
Test of Defect-Tolerant Nanoscale Architectures; and program committee member of both the
IEEE International Test Synthesis Workshop and North Atlantic Test Workshop from 2005 to
2008. He was guest editor of the IEEE Design and Test special issue on Advanced Technologies
and Reliable Design for Nanotechnology Systems in 2005. Tahoori received a PhD from the
Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford in 2003.
Acknowledging Faculty
a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s in Research and Teaching
parameters systems; dynamics and control of
microelectromechanical and nanoelectrome-
chanical sensors and actuators; and control
and manipulation at the nanoscale. He is the
associate editor of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers Journal of Dynamic
Systems, Measurement and Control; founding
chair of the ASME Technical Committee on
Vibration and Control of Smart Structures;
and past technical editor of IEEE/ASME Trans-
actions on Mechatronics. He is the author or
coauthor of more than 270 technical publica-
tions, including over 75 journal papers. His
honors include the 2003 CAREER Award from
the National Science Foundation and the 2002
Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement
Award from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Moneesh Upmanyu, Associate
Professor, Department
of Mechanical and
Industrial Engineer-
ing, was previously
associate professor at
the Colorado School
of Mines. His research is aimed at multiscale
mechanics and physics in several classes of
material systems. He heads the Group for Sim-
ulation and Theory of Atomic-Scale Material
Phenomena (stAMP), with research interests
that include interfacial phenomena during
annealing of polycrystalline microstructure;
structure-mechanics-morphology-property
relations in low-dimensional systems such
as thin films and nanowires; and atomistics,
mechanics, and self-assembly of semiflexible
and elastically stiff filamentous aggregates
as well as their networks in biology and tech-
nology. His group’s principal expertise is in
computational techniques such as molecular
dynamics and Monte Carlo–based methods
and their links with coarse-grained theo-
retical and computational frameworks, with
close to 30 peer-reviewed publications. He is
a member of the Materials Research Society,
the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society,
the American Physical Society, the American
Society for Metals, and the Society for Indus-
trial and Applied Mathematics. He earned a
bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree at
the Indian Institute of Technology and a PhD
at the University of Michigan.
Kaushik R. Chowdhury, Assistant
Professor, Department of
Electrical and Computer
Engineering, graduated
with a BE in electronics
engineering with distinction
from VJTI, Mumbai University,
in India, in 2003. In 2006 he received an MS
in computer sciences from the University of
Cincinnati, where his thesis was given the
outstanding award by both the electrical and
computer engineering and computer science
departments. He earned a PhD from the Georgia
Institute of Technology in 2009. He won the
broadband wireless networking researcher
of the year award in 2007 and the best paper
award at the Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks
symposium at IEEE ICC 2009. His expertise
and research interests lie in wireless cognitive
radio ad hoc networks, resource allocation
in wireless multimedia sensor networks, and
biomedical applications of sensors. He is a
member of the IEEE Communications Society
and the Association for Computing Machinery.
Ningfang Mi, Assistant Professor, Depart-
ment of Electrical and Com-
puter Engineering, earned a
PhD from the Department
of Computer Science at the
College of William and Mary
in 2009, with a doctoral
dissertation on dependence-driven techniques
in system design. She received a BS in computer
science from Nanjing University, in China,
in 2000 and an MS in computer science from
the University of Texas at Dallas in 2004. Her
research interests include storage systems,
multitier systems, performance evaluation,
Dagmar Sternad, Professor, is a member
of Northeastern’s
interdisciplinary
faculty. She holds
joint appointments
as professor of
electrical and com-
puter engineering in the College of Engineer-
ing, professor of biology in the College of Arts
and Sciences, and a courtesy appointment in
physics. As director of the Action Laboratory,
she researches motor control and neurosci-
ence with a focus on learning and control of
movement coordination in humans, in both
healthy and neurologically impaired individuals.
In recent research, she extended experimen-
tal paradigms to address the question of how
learning can be facilitated, with a special
focus on rehabilitation. From 1995 to 2008, she
was assistant, associate, and full professor at
the Pennsylvania State University in kinesiol-
ogy and integrative biosciences. Her work is
documented in more than 80 publications
in scientific journals and books, including
Progress in Motor Control: A Multidisciplinary
Perspective. She is also executive editor of the
Journal of Motor Behavior and a member of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Taskforce
on Childhood Motor Disorders and has served
on panels of the National Science Foundation
and NIH. She received a PhD in experimental
psychology from the University of Connecticut.
Nader Jalili, Associate Professor,
Department of
Mechanical and
Industrial Engineering,
comes to Northeastern
from Clemson
University, where
he was associate professor of mechanical
engineering and the founding director of the
Smart Structures and NEMS Laboratory. He
received a PhD from the University of Con-
necticut in 1998. His research interests and ex-
pertise include piezoelectric-based actuators
and sensors; vibration control of distributed-
College of Engineering
Welcomes New Faculty
14 NU Engineer
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energy/power management, web character-
ization, data analysis, system modeling, and
scheduling/load balancing.
Gunar Schirner, Assistant Professor,
Department of Elec-
trical and Computer
Engineering, earned an
MS in 2005 and a PhD
in 2008 in electrical and
computer engineering
from the University of California, Irvine.
Prior to joining the Northeastern faculty,
he was an assistant project scientist at the
Center for Embedded Computer Systems
at the University of California, Irvine. He
also had five years of industry experience
at Alcatel (now Alcatel-Lucent), where he
designed distributed embedded real-time
software for telecommunication products.
His research interests include embedded
system modeling, system-level design, and
the synthesis of embedded software.
Reza Sheikhi, Assistant Professor,
Department of Mechanical
and Industrial Engineering,
was a research scientist
in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering
at Virginia Tech, and
prior to that he was a research associate in
the Department of Mechanical Engineering
and Materials Science at the University
of Pittsburgh, where he received a PhD
in 2005. His current research is focused on
computational simulation and mathematical
modeling of energy, combustion, and
propulsion systems. He is also involved
in large-scale scientific computing and
algorithm development. He is a member
of the American Physical Society and the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
and a senior member of the American Insti-
tute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Another NSF CAREER Award for College of Engineering Faculty
Luca Caracoglia, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the most
recent College of Engineering faculty member to be named a recipient of the Faculty Early
Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. This brings
the total to 18 faculty members to be so honored. CAREER grants to junior faculty recognize
“outstanding research, excellent education, and the
integration of education and research.” Caracoglia will
conduct research on developing a methodology to
analyze wind loading and structural response uncertainty
in tall buildings affected by wind hazards.
Among the issues Caracoglia will address in his research
are damage to building façades or other nonstructural
elements, and discomfort levels and immediate occupancy
issues for residents. The study will make use of
performance-based simulation and analysis techniques.
NU Engineer 15
Faculty Awards AND HonorsTeiichi Ando, Professor of Mechanical and
Industrial Engineering, has been elected
a Fellow of ASM International.
Dana H. Brooks, Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, and Charles A. Dimarzio, Associate Professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, won the Microscopy
and Microanalysis 2008 Best Techniques
Paper award for their paper titled
“Determination of the Number of Cells in
Preimplantation Embryos by Using Non-
invasive Optical Quadrature Microscopy in
Conjunction with Differential Interference
Contrast Microscopy,” coauthored by
J. A. Newmark, W. C. Warger II, C. Chang,
G. E. Herrera, and C. M. Warner.
Mehmet Dokmeci, Assistant Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, was
presented with the Best Poster Award at
the 8th IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology,
an honor that acknowledges promising
research in experimental work involving
carbon nanotubes.
Andrew Gouldstone, Assistant Professor of
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, was
the recipient of the Journal of Thermal Spray
Technology Best Paper Award at the Interna-
tional Thermal Spray Conference for “On the
Role of Bubbles in Metallic Splat Nanopores
and Adhesion,” coauthored with Meng Qu.
Gregory Kowalski, Associate Professor of
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
received a 2008 Dedicated Service
Award from the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers.
Fabrizio Lombardi, ITC Endowed Professor
of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE for
his contributions to testing and fault
tolerance of digital systems.
Edwin Marengo, Assistant Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering,
was named the 2008 most distinguished
alumnus of the Technological University
of Panama in the category of research,
innovation, and technological development.
Hameed Metghalchi, Professor and Chair
of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
has been named a member of the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Executive Committee.
Carmine Vittoria, Distinguished Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, has
been elected a Life Fellow of the IEEE for his
contributions to the understanding of the
microwave properties of magnetic materials
and their applications in microwave technology.
Yaman Yener, Associate Dean and Director
of the Graduate School, has been elected
a Fellow of the American Society for
Engineering Education.
College of Engineering
Welcomes New Faculty
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Professor Luca Caracoglia
Making the World a Little Better
The Northeastern chapter of Engineers
Without Borders (EWB) has been chosen
by the U.S. State Department to be featured
on the website www.America.gov in the
fall. The EWB student chapter was chosen
as an “example of the kinds of activities
Americans do in the realm of volunteerism
and international development.” The State
Department will be documenting a planned
trip to Honduras in August, which will include
EWB members Ryan Mahoney (Civ’10), Ann
Polaneczky (Civ’11), Christian Mantilla (ChE’13),
Dan Sullivan (Civ’12), Erin Stokes (ChE’10), and
Dan Saulnier (Civ’98). The group’s work in help-
ing to bring a clean, reliable source of water
to villagers in the Yoro district of Honduras
was named “Project of the Month” in October
2008. Over the past four years, EWB has
completed three separate water projects in
Honduras, and future plans include continued
efforts there and in Uganda. Member Ethan
LaRochelle, a 2009 graduate of electrical
engineering, was recently selected to receive
1 of 10 IEEE GOLD Humanitarian Fellowships
for the project, “To Acquire Knowledge on
Energy Application and to Develop a Water
Pumping System,” for which he was the proj-
ect leader. He plans to use the funds for future
EWB water-system projects.
A group of mechanical and industrial
engineering capstone students who part-
nered with Greece-based Green Project have
designed a groundbreaking robotic clean-
ing system for solar panels that has been
submitted for a patent. The technology was
developed by Jeremy Hastie, Andrew Sweezey,
Ashton Grandy, and Mark Anderson, all 2009
mechanical engineering students.
Helping Out in the Community
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers
(AIChE) group at Northeastern has been reach-
ing out to young students in grades K–12 to
help them connect with science and engineer-
ing programs in their communities.
The Northeastern Chapter of the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) partnered
with the Charles River Conservancy to repair
the eroded slope on the Boston side of the Eliot
Street Bridge by building a new staircase and
landscaping the area to prevent further erosion.
Scholarship and Award Winners
The Mechanical Contractors Association of
America’s (MCAA) student group won first
place in the national 2008–2009 student
chapter competition.
Chad Boutet, Civ’10, won the PB Rail Engineering
Scholarship from the American Railway
Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way
Association (AREMA).
Zhuhua Cai, ChE PhD student, received the Leo M.
Falicov Student Award from the Magnetic
Interfaces and Nano-structures Division of
AVS for her presentation on MBE Integration
of BaM on Wide Bandgap 6H-SiC.
Abby Deleault, ChE’09, won a Northeastern
Outstanding Co-op Award for 2009.
Sean Mayo, EE’09, was awarded the William
Jefferson Alcott Award for his outstanding co-op
performances and contributions to society.
Roni Mittelman, an EE PhD student, and
Dilber Gamsiz and John Oldham, both ChE PhD
students, received Dissertation Writing
Fellowships, which are sponsored by the
Office of the Provost and offer financial
support to PhD candidates so they may
spend their final semester writing.
Necmiye Ozay, an EE graduate student, is the
recipient of the best student paper award at
the Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
for her paper titled “A Sparsification Approach
to Set Membership Identification of a Class
of Affine Hybrid Systems,” coauthored with
M. Sznaier, C. Lagoa, and O. Camps.
Christopher W. Stivers, ME’09, was awarded
a Tau Beta Pi graduate fellowship.
Kelly Trowbridge, ChE’09, won the 2008
AIChE Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer
National Scholarship.
Kimberly Wall, ChE’09, won the 2009 AIChE
Northeast Region Paper competition. She will
go on to represent the Northeast Region at
the national competition in November.
The Student Affairs Office awards scholar-
ships to recognize the contributions of our
student leaders on campus. College of Engi-
neering students were named recipients of
the following: Thomas I. Atkins Social Justice
Scholarship: Gidley Dorlus, ME’13, and Baba-
tunde Ogunfemi, EE’13; Karen T. Rigg Shining
Torch Scholarship: Joyce Salomon, EE’12;
Joseph Spear Scholarship: Thomas Peacock,
ME’10; and Greg Jarvis Memorial Scholarship:
Stephen Asay, IE’09.
16 NU Engineer
Students Provide Award-Winning Service
EWB team next to a completed pipeline designed to carry 22,000 gallons of water/day to the village of El Chaguite, Honduras
If you have questions, or to make your gift to engineering, contact
Mark O’Donnell, Director of Development, College of Engineering,
at 617.373.4845 or via e-mail at [email protected].
1909
Day courses begin at “The Co-operative Engineering School” with eight students and four co-op employers
1920
Bachelor’s degrees are offered in civil, electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering
1939
College of Engineering programs accredited by ECPD
1943
First women enroll at Northeastern, including one engineering student
1960
Doctoral program added, research expanded
1984
George A. & Lorraine C. Snell Engineering Center opens
1958
Graduate School of Engineering established
1996
The Richard J. (E ’61, H ’96) & Maureen Egan Research Center opens
2000
NSF ERC grant funds Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS)
2007
Edward (E ’73) & Catherine Galante establish the Galante Engineering BS/MBA Program
2006
$20 million donation from Bernard M. Gordon names CenSSIS Research Center
2008
Homeland Security Center for Excellence grant funds ALERT Center
2005
George J. Kostas, E ’43, names Nanoscale Technology and Manufacturing Research Center
2008
Sy Sternberg, ME ’68, chairman of New York Life Insurance Co., named chairman of the Board of Trustees
2008
NSF recognizes a record five engineering professors with prestigious CAREER Awards
1997
NASA-sponsored CAMMP research center established
2004
NSF NSEC grant funds Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing
2009
September 2009 Centennial Freshman Class arrives on campus
College of Engineering
230 Snell Engineering Center
Northeastern University
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
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The Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing receives $12.25 million from the National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation announced that the
Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate
Nanomanufacturing, a joint partnership among Northeastern University, the University of
Massachusetts Lowell, and the University of New Hampshire, has received a renewal grant
of $12.25 million that will extend the center’s funding for an additional five years.
The center uses high-rate/high-volume template-guided directed assembly of nanoscale
building blocks (nanotubes, nanowires, proteins, etc.) as the platform to produce very
small devices with superior properties and features compared to current electronics,
energy, medical, and materials products. The center is also investigating the environmental,
economic, regulatory, social, and ethical impacts of nanomanufacturing. The center is
working with 36 industrial partners to develop tools and processes that could accelerate
the creation of highly anticipated commercial products.
Director: Ahmed Busnaina, William Lincoln Smith Professor of Mechanical Engineering,
Northeastern University
An NSF NSEC